How to Dress Well
“What Is This Heart?”
Reviewed by: Ari Roth
In many ways, “What Is This Heart?“ feels inevitable, the logical culmination of Tom Krell’s avant-pop project. The last four years have seen him slowly and methodically stripping back the patina of digital clipped distortion and endless, cavernous reverb that masked his skeletal melodic structures and stunning, fluttering falsetto voice. “What Is This Heart?“ is the moment when Krell steps forward, his voice (mostly) unadorned, accompanied by his most immediate and emotionally rewarding set of songs. In the past, the degree of critical adulation that How to Dress Well received was frustrating, and there was a sense that what was being rewarded was mostly the conceptual and referential foundation of the project, rather than the music itself. This is no longer the case. At its best, “What Is This Heart?” is a fully realized work in every sense, with melodies and arrangements that, for the first time, fully live up to Krell’s astounding vocals and sky high ambitions.
Intriguingly, the album begins with its least immediate and widescreen material. Album opener “2 Years On (Shame Dream)” opens with soft, wandering, dissonant piano clusters before emerging as a close-miced, hyperintimate piece framed by the sparest of acoustic guitar. It brings to mind both singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman and experimental band Xiu Xiu at their most restrained, two avowed influences on the album that constitute the poles of lyrical confessionalism pared with experiments in timbre and texture that frame the project. The first three tracks are also the darkest and most turmoil-laden, including single “Face Again,” with its visceral drum and bass thud and pitched-down vocals over which Krell twists and seethes, “if they could, they’d leave us out to die.” The song’s message is difficult to parse, but both sonically and lyrically Krell is wrestling with pain and ambivalence, from lashing out with “I don’t think you know what’s best for me,” to finally admitting, “I don’t even know what’s best for me.”
From there, “What Is This Heart?“ opens up into a dazzling mid-album run that represents the peak of the How to Dress Well project to date. Songs like the singles “Words I Don’t Remember” and “Repeat Pleasure” don’t just adopt the affect of pop music – they are pop music, complete with giant, unforgettable hooks and soaring choruses. If a great deal of “pop-influenced” experimental music of the past few years held emotion at a distance, never committing to the enormous amount of craft and love required to construct great pop music, these songs see Krell breaking through such boundaries and writing honest-to-goodness, unqualified pop songs. This also means being unafraid to dive headfirst into unrestrained moments of pure feeling that walk the line between transcendence and cheese, as in the incredible, Céline Dion-referencing peak of “Repeat Pleasure.” Such risks are what elevate these songs far beyond Krell’s past work.
The rest of the album further develops this sound and many others, even folding in a gorgeous, sweeping update of the early How to Dress Well sound in the form of “Pour Cyril”, with its washes of strings and layered, reverberating vocals dissolving into distortion. It’s an extraordinary, heart-swelling song and also a reminder of the project’s progression up to this point, seamlessly melding noise and beauty until the two are indistinguishable. “Very Best Friend”, meanwhile, references Krell’s Chicago hometown with its house drum machines, upbeat pulse and promises of devotion. “House Inside (Future Is Older Than The Past)” ends the record on another peak, with emotive vocals and heart-in-throat melodies spread out over its extended runtime, its final lines receding into silence like a long exhalation at the end of an album’s worth of catharsis.
“What Is This Heart?” is not a perfect album, and it certainly does not signal the endpoint of the entire project. There are still areas to explore and perfect, to grow and develop. Still, the record communicates the gratifying rush of potential fulfilled. When unveiling the album for the first time on Twitter, Krell said “I’ve never been more proud of anything in my life,” and that aura of a proud artist coming into his own permeates“What Is This Heart?”, making it one of the best pop albums in recent memory, full-stop.
Rating: 
